xref: /third_party/node/deps/npm/node_modules/@npmcli/installed-package-contents/README.md

# @npmcli/installed-package-contents

Get the list of files installed in a package in node_modules, including
bundled dependencies.

This is useful if you want to remove a package node from the tree _without_
removing its child nodes, for example to extract a new version of the
dependency into place safely.

It's sort of the reflection of [npm-packlist](http://npm.im/npm-packlist),
but for listing out the _installed_ files rather than the files that _will_
be installed.  This is of course a much simpler operation, because we don't
have to handle ignore files or package.json `files` lists.

## USAGE

```js
// programmatic usage
const pkgContents = require('@npmcli/installed-package-contents')

pkgContents({ path: 'node_modules/foo', depth: 1 }).then(files => {
  // files is an array of items that need to be passed to
  // rimraf or moved out of the way to make the folder empty
  // if foo bundled dependencies, those will be included.
  // It will not traverse into child directories, because we set
  // depth:1 in the options.
  // If the folder doesn't exist, this returns an empty array.
})

pkgContents({ path: 'node_modules/foo', depth: Infinity }).then(files => {
  // setting depth:Infinity tells it to keep walking forever
  // until it hits something that isn't a directory, so we'll
  // just get the list of all files, but not their containing
  // directories.
})
```

As a CLI:

```bash
$ installed-package-contents node_modules/bundle-some -d1
node_modules/.bin/some
node_modules/bundle-some/package.json
node_modules/bundle-some/node_modules/@scope/baz
node_modules/bundle-some/node_modules/.bin/foo
node_modules/bundle-some/node_modules/foo
```

CLI options:

```
Usage:
  installed-package-contents <path> [-d<n> --depth=<n>]

Lists the files installed for a package specified by <path>.

Options:
  -d<n> --depth=<n>   Provide a numeric value ("Infinity" is allowed)
                      to specify how deep in the file tree to traverse.
                      Default=1
  -h --help           Show this usage information
```

## OPTIONS

* `depth` Number, default `1`.  How deep to traverse through folders to get
    contents.  Typically you'd want to set this to either `1` (to get the
    surface files and folders) or `Infinity` (to get all files), but any
    other positive number is supported as well.  If set to `0` or a
    negative number, returns the path provided and (if it is a package) its
    set of linked bins.
* `path` Required.  Path to the package in `node_modules` where traversal
    should begin.

## RETURN VALUE

A Promise that resolves to an array of fully-resolved files and folders
matching the criteria.  This includes all bundled dependencies in
`node_modules`, and any linked executables in `node_modules/.bin` that the
package caused to be installed.

An empty or missing package folder will return an empty array.  Empty
directories _within_ package contents are listed, even if the `depth`
argument would cause them to be traversed into.

## CAVEAT

If using this module to generate a list of files that should be recursively
removed to clear away the package, note that this will leave empty
directories behind in certain cases:

- If all child packages are bundled dependencies, then the
    `node_modules` folder will remain.
- If all child packages within a given scope were bundled dependencies,
    then the `node_modules/@scope` folder will remain.
- If all linked bin scripts were removed, then an empty `node_modules/.bin`
    folder will remain.

In the interest of speed and algorithmic complexity, this module does _not_
do a subsequent readdir to see if it would remove all directory entries,
though it would be easier to look at if it returned `node_modules` or
`.bin` in that case rather than the contents.  However, if the intent is to
pass these arguments to `rimraf`, it hardly makes sense to do _two_
`readdir` calls just so that we can have the luxury of having to make a
third.

Since the primary use case is to delete a package's contents so that they
can be re-filled with a new version of that package, this caveat does not
pose a problem.  Empty directories are already ignored by both npm and git.